Coaching and Care of Athletes

COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES true." In other words, that writer's knowledge of some at least of the events he describes has been culled at second hand from other people's text-books. Of the study of books I shall have more to say presently. Suffice it, for the moment, to say that books can be exceedingly valuable to the coach. Often such reading will suggest a new point ofview, or possibly confirm one's own opinions. This class of study requires careful selection of what is valuable and the rejection of what is worthless. For the amateur-and there are many of them whose love of athletics is so great that they feel a positive urge to keep in the game by taking up coaching after their own days of active parti– cipation are done-there are several ways of becoming proficient. In the first p1ace, such a man will have a good store of personal experience to draw upon, and, being the enthusiast he is, will probably have seen not a few world's champions in action, and may even have rubbed shoulders with some of the world's great coaches. If he has been himself a really first-class athlete it is at least probable that he will, at some time or other, have derived the benefit of first-class coaching. For amateur and professional alike there are now coaching sc-hools in almost every country. Finland has established a coaching college at Vierumaki, while Germany has fathered such an institution for a number of years. In England Easter coaching courses, mainly for schoolmasters, are now held annually in Essex, Middlesex, and Surrey, and I think it speaks volumes for the efficiency of the English Summer School that several of the men who were students at the first School have returned to Loughborough in subsequent years to act as assistant coaches, while a still greater number have given their services, with ex– cellent results, at the Easter schools. In 1937, while the British Government was preparing plans for building a National College of Sport and Physical Education, there was instituted, as a part of Loughborough College, the first School of Athletics, Games, and Physical Education in England. The new School was founded for the purpose of giving a first– class education in the practice and teaching of athletics, games, and physical training to young men intending to take up the professions of games masters, welfare supervisors, physical training instructors, physical activity organizers, and sports coaches. The three-year course of instruction covers a complete curri- 58